Maria produced the 21st local number 1 and the 7th by a local woman as ‘Clap Your Hands And Stamp Your Feet’ dislodged Dawn’s ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree’ from the top spot after the latter had occupied it for 4 weeks.

Paul Simon’s ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’ took the biggest climber award with a 7 place jump from 19 to 12. He had managed a 9 place jump with his previous solo hit, ‘Mother And Child Reunion’ and an even bigger 10 place jump as one half of Simon & Garfunkel with ‘The Sounds Of Silence’.

The only other star rater this week was Medicine Head’s ‘One & One Is One’ which moved up 5 places from 16 to 11.

Faller of the week was Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ which fell 4 from 12 to 16 to take the award.

Shirley Bassey’s ‘Never, Never, Never’ ticked over to 18 weeks on the charts and enjoyed its 3rd week as the oldest on the top 20.

Mynie & Jan’s ‘Ek Verlang Nog Altyd’ became the 24th song that would have a total chart run of 1 week spent at the bottom position of the charts. They were the 9th act for whom such a chart run would be their only top 20 action.

Accompanying Mynie & Jan off the charts was Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Get Down’ which spent 16 weeks on the charts and peaked at 3. This was 1 week more and a 3 places higher peak than his only other hit to date, ‘Clair’. O’Sullivan’s weeks count totalled 31 and this was the record to date for an Irish act, almost double that of Joe Dolan, the second placed Irishman who was on 16. O’Sullivan would return to our charts at a later date.

The George Baker Selection became the 3rd act to have charted with 2 songs that had a colour in the title as ‘Baby Blue’ entered at 18. Their previous ‘colour’ hit was ‘Little Green Bag’. The other 2 colourful artists were Jim Reeves who had charted with ‘Blue Side Of Lonesome’ and ‘That’s When I See The Blues’ and The Rolling Stones who had a record to date 3 with ‘Paint It Black, ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ (the Oxford English Dictionary defines ruby as ‘an intense purplish-red colour’ in case you were wondering). As with ‘Little Green Bag’, ‘Baby Blue’ was written by Hans Bouwens (George Baker’s real name) and the song made number 8 in Holland and 30 in Belgium, but failed to chart in either the US or the UK. It had been 160 weeks since The George Baker Selection had been on our charts and this was the 13th biggest gap between hits that we had seen to date. It was the largest gap so far for an act that was not from the UK, the US or SA.

The other new entry this week was The Doobie Brothers’ ‘Long Train Runnin’’. The song made number 58 in Australia, 8 in Canada, 64 in Germany, 22 in Italy, 12 in Holland and 8 in the US. A remixed version was released in 1993 and this made number 32 in Belgium, 14 in Ireland, 33 in Poland and 7 in the UK. In 1991, Bananrama took a cover version of the song to number 30 in the UK as well as making a number of other European charts.

After having seen the solo male artists being dominant in the charts for 44 weeks, they were finally overtaken by groups as 9 of the top 20 this week were by groups, 6 by solo male artists, 4 by solo female artists and 1 by a collaboration (Dawn & Tony Orland, although one could argue that they were a group).

It had also been a while since 1 nation had given us at least 9 songs in the chart but the Americans manage that this week. The previous nation to do this was South Africa back on 1 December 1972. The Americans also led the overall hit count list with 348 to their name compared to the Brits 343.

Dawn and Lauren Copley both celebrated having spent a total of 50 weeks in the charts. They were the 39th and 40th act to manage this.

The Dealians caught up to The Bats for weeks count with both acts on 45. They shared 10th place on the local weeks count list.